This site exists as a clearinghouse of information on the explosion that killed six Kansas City firefighters in November 1988. Many people remember the morning when shock waves shattered windows and woke people out of bed across the metro area. The case remains one of Kansas City’s strangest mysteries.

What started as a routine call on a vehicle fire turned tragic when an unmarked construction trailer containing 25,000 pounds of ammonium-nitrite and fuel oil exploded while firefighters fought a second fire at a highway construction site. Across the street and up a hill from the vehicle fire, arsonists also set a company pickup truck and trailer on fire. A battalion chief and his driver and two private security guards witnessed the explosion. There was nothing they could do to save the firefighters. Approximately forty minutes later, after emergency responders evacuated the area, a second explosion of equal magnitude ripped through the site without causing injury.

McGraw, who was 69, retired from The Star in April 2014 after a 30-year career, mostly as an investigative reporter. He then joined KCPT as a projects reporter for the Hale Center for Journalism. He also covered Midwestern agriculture and agribusiness for NPR and KCUR’s Harvest Public Media.

His projects and occasional columns continued to appear in The Star.“Mick was perhaps the best reporter in the history of The Star, and that’s really saying something when you consider all the exceptional journalists who have worked here,” said Mike Fannin, The Star’s editor and vice president. “This I can say for sure: He was a hero to many people in this newsroom, myself included.”

The Kansas City area native, whom many affectionately called Mick, died in hospice care, surrounded by family. He is survived by his wife of 48 years, Ruth, their two sons, Andy and John, and four grandsons.

On the morning of March 6, 2017, I gathered up all I had in my cell at the Leavenworth Detention Center — two decades’ worth of not a whole lot. My toothbrush, my shoes, my magazines and newspaper clippings.

I thought I had gathered everything. I was ready to leave my six-foot-wide cell behind and begin a new life as a man finally released from prison.

But on my way out the door, a guard handed me one more piece of mail that had just arrived that morning. It was a letter from someone whose name I knew well but had not yet met.

The letter was from Tracey Kilventon, the wife of James Kilventon. James’ father was one of the firefighters killed in the tragic explosion at a highway construction site in Kansas City in 1988. Four others and I had been convicted of starting the fire that caused the explosion. We were sentenced to life without parole. In spite of our claims of innocence and the complete lack of evidence connecting us to the crime, we had been in prison ever since.

The only reason I was released from prison that morning in March was a recent Supreme Court ruling. I was 17 in 1988, and the court ruled it unconstitutional for minors to be given life sentences with no chance of parole. I was re-sentenced to time served, and three days later I walked out of my cell for the last time.

A new lawsuit could provide Kansas City with long-awaited answers to questions about a case that has haunted our city.

The six firefighters who answered a call early one morning in November 1988 unwittingly rushed toward their deaths. A massive explosion at the construction site off Highway 71 instantly took the men’s lives.

Their names have never been forgotten: Fire Capts. Gerald Halloran and James Kilventon Jr. and firefighters Thomas Fry, Luther Hurd, Robert D. McKarnin and Michael Oldham.

But to this day, what, exactly, the government knows about what happened that morning — who was involved and how investigators settled on and pursued the five people who were later convicted of arson — has never been fully revealed. All were sentenced to life in prison.

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